


A Tear the Sun Lets Fall

by lost_spook



Category: Sapphire and Steel
Genre: Community: hc_bingo, Elemental Weirdness, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-01
Updated: 2013-11-01
Packaged: 2017-12-31 04:13:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1027097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lost_spook/pseuds/lost_spook
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For once, Bronze is afraid, and something more than time has been broken.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Tear the Sun Lets Fall

**Author's Note:**

> For the “tyranny/rebellion” square for Hurt/Comfort Bingo, and also the prompt Bronze & Copper – rescue + penance and reform.

_Inside his mind, they were back on the hillside. There was blood on the grass and on the stones, and also on Copper. It screamed to him of pain and injustice and things that should not have happened. It was there, on his hands; he couldn’t ignore it, as he tried to reach for the weapon._

*

Bronze walked down the softly sloping hill, heading towards the woods. She passed through the long grass without effort or dirtying her robe, although for preference she’d always have chosen the more civilised parts of the world, not this wild, northern land. There was no sign of anyone else nearby, but that was misleading. There had been people here not long ago, mostly people who should not have been here, some of whom could not really be called people. And now she was here, following someone.

Something terrible had happened up on the hillside. The knowledge trailed along behind her and fears danced on ahead, though Bronze rarely gave into such things. This time, though, she was afraid. 

She had arrived not long ago to find Iron and Diamond waiting for her on the hilltop. Even for Iron, his mood had been grave and she hadn’t needed to ask why. The break that had opened up here had been so drastic that smaller fractures were spreading out from it in all directions and dimensions, promising more trouble, and stealing unwonted into the future and the past. 

That wasn’t what they wanted her for, though, she’d known that at once. The damage and the repair had been completed as far as it could be. Iron and Diamond would reinforce that, but she’d been brought in for a different reason.

Copper, Iron had said, hadn’t come back. He’d been sent into this mess alone by error or possibly by deliberate action of the enemy. They’d run into those others – the Transient Beings – in several places of late. That hadn’t been Copper’s fault, of course. He’d done all that he could in managing to seal the breach, but then, they told her, he hadn’t returned. He hadn’t made a report or waited for the Operators to arrive. He’d walked away.

“It could be them,” Iron had said. “The other side. It’s the sort of thing that would get their attention and maybe Copper –”

Bronze had shaken her head instantly. Some things she knew without doubt, through and through her being. “No. He wouldn’t join them.”

“It’s been thirty-seven hours and fourteen minutes since he was sent,” Diamond had said. “He’s not been inactive, Bronze, but he’s not here.”

She’d been as confident as ever: “Don’t worry. I can find him. That won’t be a problem.”

“Won’t it?” 

Iron always said she was over-confident, but she usually corrected that to ‘justifiably confident’ instead and dismissed his unaccountable and unfounded pessimism. This time, she had only smiled rather than argued, and walked away after Copper. This time, she was no longer certain of the outcome.

*

She didn’t believe Copper would choose to join the other side. And yet, she thought, unable to shake the sense of alarm, he might not choose to join the other authorities, but if they lost him, then in the end, it would amount to the same thing. The possibility of that did frighten her. So did the idea that she might already be too late.

Diamond had sensed traces of the break and shared them with Iron and Bronze. What there was did not make sense, being only fragments now, but they were all worrying: images of blood, of humans dying by inexplicable means, and time shattering over and over.

That was all that was left. Copper had tidied everything else away in his usual meticulous fashion. He had done better than they could have expected of a Technician left alone in such a situation. Bronze had told them before, she thought, and here was more proof: Technicians needed more experience. They shouldn’t be hidden away until they were needed, like weapons up their sleeve, too valuable to be produced until the last moment. It was asking for trouble, she felt.

“Copper?” she called out, as she stepped into the shade of the trees. The wood was deciduous, and it was summer, so the leaves and undergrowth obscured her view. She’d tried repeatedly to reach him the other way, speaking to his mind, ever since she’d first picked up trace of him, but he hadn’t replied. She knew he was here. Following Copper wasn’t difficult. She didn’t even have to think about it; his location was merely another piece of hard information in her mind.

That he was nearer now was little consolation if she couldn’t contact him. Something was keeping her out, and she was afraid.

*

_There was a beauty in working with her colleagues, Bronze saw that. Iron didn’t understand, but then, perhaps he didn’t understand primarily to counteract the fact that she did. There was, after all, beauty and balance in the way they interacted. She saw it as a complex dance: they were always changing partners, learning the steps. Iron, if he allowed such a fancy, would probably argue that they were more like miners, hacking away at the endless rock face together and needed no frivolous distractions._

_And she and Copper – there were lines, there were connections that crossed and tangled together, things that needed no words. That was always how it was, how she recalled it. If you measured such things, which she didn’t, she might probably be younger than Copper, but it felt as if it were the other way round._

_She remembered the other times now, so many of them:_

_She remembered sudden and bewildering immobility. She’d been examining a series of impossible hieroglyphs, seeing how they moved and rearranged themselves – and then suddenly everything blurred and her sharp senses were dulled. She had no idea where she was, only somewhere wrapped away, muffled and silent. Even she could only wait – wait for some piece of information to break through, or for someone to come for her. Or, if she was unlucky, something to come looking for the prey it had snared._

_However long it was, she didn’t know, but what reached her first was a voice in her mind, familiar but unexpected, and sounding slightly amused:_ So, there you are!

Copper.

You’re painted onto the wall, _he told her._ And there’s something moving towards you, inch by inch. A warrior with a sword. Yes, it’s just edged nearer again.

Copper, can you get me out?

_She felt something like a soft breeze pass over her, freeing her, at least to the extent that she had some limited movement. It wasn’t enough._

Yes, _he said, and at the same moment, she felt him touch her, felt his hand grip her arm, breaking through the line of reality and unreality between them. She felt a jolt, like a static electrical charge, and then she had full access to her own powers again, and she could move._

_“It’s usually the other way around, isn’t it?” Copper said, as she found herself standing beside him, examining the hieroglyphs again._

_Bronze nodded, but then she moved forward, touching the images. “What do you make of these?”_

_“I haven’t had a chance to examine them. I was looking for you.”_

_She turned her head, and gave a smile. “Of course you were. But now that you’re here –”_

_“I shall take a very good look at them,” he said, and smiled back at her. “Do they normally move like that?”_

_Bronze shook her head. “No, Copper. That’s the point.”_

*

Bronze found him kneeling beside a stream, examining a rock he’d pulled out of the water. She moved nearer, but stopped a short distance away from him, catching herself in time to be cautious.

“Copper,” she said, and wondered if he would answer.

He looked around and then up at her. “So it’s you. But of course it is.”

“Of course,” she echoed. “Copper.”

Copper got to his feet. He was taller than she’d ever realised. “We have freedom, don’t we?” he asked her. “Independence of a sort? If I’m not being called, why shouldn’t I be here?”

There were some of her own words in there, she knew, but she ignored his question and took another step forward, focusing on him. “You’re _angry_ ,” she said. “Aren’t you?”

*

_“Copper.”_

_She’d arrived inside the building, in answer to his call, and now she saw what was wrong: he was standing beside a doorway, hanging grimly onto the arm of the struggling man. Copper could hold him, of course, but it wasn’t really what he was here for. Unlike Bronze, he was designed for dexterity, for specialist knowledge and skills. And in Copper’s case, he never had been that good at dealing with humans, not the awkward, truculent ones like this._

_Bronze caught hold of the man by his other arm, and he abruptly stopped fighting in surprise and twisted about between them, trying to look at her._

_“Copper’s trying to help you. If you go in there, something very unpleasant will happen to you – and then to everyone. I’d imagine you would die, but I suppose you might be even more unlucky.” She smiled, then, softening into a coaxing mode, pulling him back, gently. “Come on. You don’t want that, do you?”_

_“Let go of me!” he said. He was too afraid and too angry to listen. “I don’t know who you are, I don’t know what you came here for, but I live here –”_

_Bronze sighed. “You may want to die, of course, but even if you do, we can’t allow it. The damage to Time would be far too great.”_

__Bronze! _Copper stiffened._ It’s moving. I hadn’t finished before he came and tried to get inside. It’s coming this way. __

_She understood what else he was saying and pulled the man further away from the doorway. Copper released his hold on him, and she caught the inconvenient human by both arms and faced him. “This way.”_

_“But –”_

_Bronze looked at the man until his panic died away into bewilderment. “Leave. Now!”_

_She all but pushed the human out, and then, when she turned back to Copper, she saw the shade from the inner chamber emerge and pass into him. She’d been about to speak to him and so, momentarily connected, she felt the world cloud and darken around her. Then she stepped back, removing herself mentally and physically. She pressed herself against the wall, and then looked at the Technician again._

_“Let me out,” he said, though without urgency, as if he believed in the reasonableness of his request. It wasn’t Copper, though; it was the shade, the one that had waited in the lyre, the stringed instrument that had not been purified. As ever, fear and superstition called to what lay outside the corridor, and this shade had been brought into being._

_She didn’t take her eyes from him. She ignored the shade; she spoke to her colleague._ Copper. You know who you are. You know me. Copper! __

_He closed his eyes and shook himself, and then opened them again, and she saw that he was Copper, if still confused. She smiled and stretched out her hand to grip his wrist and the darkness and uncertainty burned away in a blaze of light._

_Bronze was never afraid of the darkness._

*

“What is it you’re doing here?” she asked, changing her approach. She smiled at him, and sat beside him at the edge of the stream. Even this close, though, she still couldn’t read him. She should be able to; it was something that she did, and especially easily with someone like Copper. Being shut out was a shock that reverberated through her and echoed on, like someone slamming a door in her face.

Copper continued to attend to the rock, turning it over in his hands. “Does it matter to you?” he asked. She couldn’t read him; he might as easily be amused or genuinely curious, or both.

“It does if it’s dangerous.” She tried to keep her tone light.

Copper only shrugged.

“And we need to know what happened,” she said. “You must understand that. No one blames you, Copper. You did everything that you could, maybe even more. You sealed the breach.”

Copper turned his head to look at her. “I sealed the breach,” he agreed, still in that tone that was somewhere between amusement and naïve earnestness. “But how many more are there? How many fractures, fissures, cracks, weak spots bending under the pressure? How many, Bronze?”

Bronze closed her eyes and saw what Diamond had shown her. Yes, she had seen something of that, too. Still, she only shook her head. “You’re angry,” she said again. “Copper?”

“And that would be surprising?”

Yes, she thought, but privately. Yes, it would. “Was it them?” she asked. “The others – the Transients? We have to know.”

Copper stared ahead and thought about that for a minute or two before he answered. “I suppose it could have been,” he said. “There wasn’t any indication of what it was before the break occurred. But I didn’t see anyone, not this time.”

*

_She’d called him across to her side the moment she saw him talking to the woman. She leant in towards him when he reached her. “Copper. Didn’t I warn you? Don’t go near any of them.”_

_“Do you know who – what – she is, or was?” Copper asked._

_Bronze put her hand on his wrist and guided him further away, stepping right through the wall behind them. “That’s irrelevant. She’s on the other side, that’s all that matters now. It is… a war, I suppose, Copper. You don’t converse with the enemy.”_

Which one of us she was, I meant. _He seemed puzzled by her stamping down on his question._

_Bronze lifted her head and tightened her grip on his wrist until it must have been painful, but Copper gave no indication that he found it so. “Yes,” she said, fiercely. “Don’t you understand?”_

_“Isn’t the information useful?”_

_It cut through her, the idea of that. “No,” she said, and he looked down at her, saying nothing more until his expression changed, and she supposed he understood._

_“You either are something, or you aren’t?” he said, softly._

_Bronze smiled, and released her hold on him. “You’re Copper,” she said, with a nod. “You go where you’re sent and fulfil your purpose. If you don’t, then you cannot be Copper.” You would have freedom, she supposed, of some sort, but not what she counted as that state; not if you rebelled against your very nature, purpose and form. She understood that, perhaps she saw clearer than many of the others what that choice was. That was part of what was in her being and what she would not lose, not for power or rebellion or any other fine-sounding lie. She was Bronze, and Bronze she would remain._

_“Don’t worry,” said Copper, laughing slightly at her sudden seriousness. “It did no harm. I learned something and –” now he was definitely mocking her, or possibly himself, but gently “- there is no stain on my soul.”_

_Bronze looked up at him, her gaze dark. “No, that’s naïve, Copper. You haven’t asked the other question: what do you suppose they learned about you?”_

_She’d always said, hadn’t she, that Technicians needed far more practical experience than they were usually allowed?_

*

“I saw something of the breach,” she said. “Diamond showed us. Blood – death – was there a weapon from the future?”

Copper turned his head sharply. “Does it matter?” he said, with a hardness that she wasn’t used to from him. “You said yourself it had been sealed. If you know, then you know. I don’t think you do, though.”

“What is it?” Bronze asked. “I’m reading anger in you, Copper. Over and above everything else. Anger… guilt. That can’t be right. You should let me look – you may be malfunctioning.”

“I think not.”

Bronze studied him. “You’re angry because you were sent in alone?”

“I wasn’t alone.”

She nearly didn’t understand, and even when she did, she couldn’t believe it. “Copper. You _are_ malfunctioning. It’s hardly surprising –”

“I was sent in to assist two Operators,” Copper said, finally looking at her. “That is the normal procedure, is it not?”

“That’s impossible.”

“They don’t exist any more,” said Copper distantly. “They never did, not now. They were unmade, unwritten when time broke and unravelled.”

Bronze caught her breath. “Who?”

Copper shook his head. “That doesn’t matter now. You told me that once. You either are something, or you aren’t. They no longer are. I – I was working on one of the weapons. It wasn’t only one that came through – several – each further from the future, each used to kill –”

Bronze leant over to touch his arm, and stop him speaking. He wasn’t equipped to deal with a wholesale time break like that, not even in memory.

_They were at the breach. They did what was needed to begin to seal it, but they were too close when time reasserted itself. I was busy with the weapon._

“And now you’re angry,” she said. She could almost see now, but he was too confused for her to get any further: Copper didn’t understand what had happened, either. There were incomprehensible memories in him – of blood and death, of the future, of a rewritten past, of Operators he’d known and yet who never had existed.

“We can’t wait for it to happen again,” he said. “I followed the fractures outward – I’ve been tracing the lines, taking preventative action. What’s wrong with that?”

Bronze considered how to answer. “Well, it’s not very like you. Let me look, Copper. Let me read you.”

“You were the one who said I needed more experience,” he said, and now she could hear the anger, not merely sense it. “Perhaps now I agree, perhaps that’s all.”

“You’re still being naïve,” said Bronze, giving way to impatience. “What exactly do you think will happen to you, working out here alone? If you don’t go where you’re most needed, or return when you’re asked, where do you think that ends?”

“Don’t worry. I’m always careful.”

“Except that you’ll cease to be Copper,” she said, and she let him see how much it hurt to even say it. “And don’t you think that ensuring that it is all over is only prudent? Let me read you. You know I can help.”

He gave in, then, to her great relief. Slowly and stiffly, almost like a tree being felled, he leant against her. She caught hold of him, and ran a hand through his hair as she started to examine him. There was such confusion in him; she could see it so plainly now that he wasn’t locking her out. There were jagged lines in his mind, tears caused by what had happened, and also those that had happened and then been rewritten, erased. His thought processes, his gleaming, sharp, thought processes were collapsing in on themselves. 

“ _Copper_ ,” she said, in instinctive distress at her readings. She then steeled herself, pushing the sense of hurt aside, and sorted through his thoughts, sifting what was and was not Copper with practised ease until she hit at something that bit into her own mind. There was a sudden blackness and nothing but pain, and she gasped at it, and then drew it into herself, breaking it with her strength, driving it away with the brightness of her being. _Copper_ , she said, into his mind, as gently as she could. _Copper, are you still with me?_

_Yes. More or less._

She smiled faintly to herself on hearing the familiar edge of humour in his words. _Good. This won’t take long. Just let me have the rest of it – all of it –_

Copper made a move to lift his head, but he didn’t quite manage it. _Are you sure?_

_Aren’t I always?_

*

_Inside his mind, they were back on the hillside. There was blood on the grass and on the stones, and also on Copper. It screamed to him of pain and injustice and things that should not have happened. It was there, on his hands; he couldn’t ignore it, as he tried to reach for the weapon._

_It was a sword, first, but far better made than anything this century would ever see, then a device for firing a bolt with more accuracy than any archers here possessed, and then, on, different weapons entirely – explosive, projectile weapons that at once fascinated him by their design and invention and repelled him in their effectiveness at killing. The knowledge that this was the future filled him with dismay. He’d hoped they would have learned at last, not merely refined their methods of murder._

_There was an echo passing through Copper, over and over, and ghosts somewhere that she couldn’t see – names snatched away by the wind before she could even hear them, but still the last echo of it: have been assigned, have been assigned, have been assigned._

_The sky behind him was wild: vivid reds and blues and purples clashing impossibly. That was the anger, she thought. She remained calm in the middle of it all, reading the situation. It was a dark place to be, in all ways possible. And under the ground, under the hill, bodies were buried here, buried long, long ago._

_“Let go of the weapons,” she said to Copper, ignoring the rest. “You’ve already dealt with them.”_

_“They keep using them,” he said. “A warrior coming out of nowhere, with a different weapon each time – sometimes from the past, sometimes from the future. Weapons of flint, of steel, iron, bronze, and more; it changes each time. But each time the same man dies. The man who merely happened to be there.”_

_“On the hillside before, not now,” Bronze reminded him. “It’s over. Let go of the weapons. You can’t hold this much of the future in your mind, not yet.”_

_Copper looked up and seemed to see her this time. “I shouldn’t spoil the surprise, I suppose?” Then, reluctantly, as if he thought the weapons themselves would leap away and murder someone else if let loose, he put them down, one after the other. Bronze watched the clouds in the boiling sky slow and soften into more natural colours._

_“Good,” said Bronze, and held out her hands to him. “Now, all we need to do is leave.”_

_“But there’s still work to be done.”_

_She nodded. “Yes, but not here. Elsewhere.”_

_“I have to prevent this stretching further. I have to do more. It isn’t over. It can’t be over. That can’t be all there was. I have to get them back. We have to get them back.”_

_Bronze shook her head and kept her hands outstretched, ready to take his. “It’s too late. It’s finished now. It’s only in here that it isn’t – and now, it must be, Copper, it must.”_

_Copper hesitated, and then he nodded in acknowledgement. He took her hands and then light blazed up between them, burning away everything that was not Bronze and not Copper._

*

The world outside Copper’s thoughts – the real world, some would say – was far more peaceful. Deceptively so, Bronze knew, but it was a pleasant illusion and she smiled at it, before glancing back at Copper, still leaning against her underneath the tree. He had changed, she realised, in sudden alarm. He looked older, and his usually fairish brown hair had lightened and greyed under her hands.

“Copper,” she said, suddenly uncertain again. “Did I damage you? Copper!”

He opened his eyes, and gave her a brief smile, slightly mocking. “You weren’t the only one in my mind, Bronze.”

“You did this. But why?”

Copper shrugged. “Why not? It seemed fitting. A reminder, if you will.”

“Is that wise?”

He bit back amusement. “I like to think so. To be more careful. And that I think you are wrong.”

“About experience being necessary? I know I’m not. In most cases, anyway.”

Copper looked at her. “And mostly,” he said, as if it was an answer to both questions, and she thought perhaps it was, “a reminder that I am more dangerous than I realised. So… I should be more careful, don’t you agree?”

Bronze didn’t argue. Instead, she watched him get to his feet, and let him help her to stand. “You remember them, don’t you?” she asked. “You know who it is we’ve lost.”

“I… don’t,” said Copper. “No. They went. But I know they were there – and in my mind I have an inkling hidden away, no more.”

Bronze nodded. “I know. There’s an ache in me I can’t explain. I picked it up from you.”

“It hurts you?”

“It hurts us all.” She thought again of them all as the dancers in a complicated set, or as components parts of complex machinery – weights and balances and wheels that turned. Any part that was no longer there disrupted the pattern of the whole and left them off-kilter.

Copper nodded. “And now I must make my report,” he said, solemnly. “Thank you, Bronze.”

He vanished in front of her and she shivered. It was no doubt because of the energy she had expended in retrieving Copper, but suddenly she doubted herself and her ideas of patterns, of tapestries and dances. She could see no such thing now, not in her mind. They could all be lost, rewritten, and they could be replaced, as if it didn’t matter. Perhaps Iron was right, Copper was right, and she was wrong.

“Bronze?” said a voice behind her, and she turned around and saw Iron, as if she’d summoned him. Perhaps she had. She caught at him, and he held her, awkwardly. She wanted to explain, but there weren’t words for it, not for this.

And Iron, who didn’t understand about patterns and dancing, who didn’t see the delicate balance of things, only said, “I know.” For this moment, when she didn’t understand, he did, or enough, and still they balanced each other out. She saw it again, and so she smiled. “I said I could find Copper.”

“He’s where he should be?”

That, she thought, was probably a complicated question and the answer was debatable, but she nodded. “And the break – it is definitely gone?”

He frowned at her. “Of course,” he said, with his usual impatience. “I would hardly be here if it weren’t.”

“Very true,” said Bronze, humour stealing back into her. Even so, she leant against him, and touched his robe, reading him, reading their shared history. They had been weapons and watchmen, they had been gods and goddesses, bringers of death, or those that lit the beacons against the dark – and yet always and only themselves. They were threads in a complicated pattern, stars in their places above: Copper and Iron and Bronze, and all the others with them.

“Bronze? Is something still wrong? Copper?”

She shook her head and moved away from him, ready to go. “No. Copper is Copper.”

“Then there’s no point standing here,” said Iron, prosaic as ever. “We shall be wanted elsewhere.”

“Yes,” she said. “I’m sure we shall. All of us.”


End file.
